


Daffodils

by RurouniHime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Apologies, Character Death, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poetry, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco returns on a day of mourning. Inspired by William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daffodils

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alex_s9](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=alex_s9).



They stared at him as he crossed the grass. He glanced, saw them weaving their way from the gravestone on slow feet, their bodies dark splotches in the clear air. The breeze ruffled through his hair like long fingers. He knew his black robes looked the same as theirs, the kiss of death on this perfect, vibrant field. In the procession, he caught flickers of fire, crackling glares, dull eyes full of his reflection. The spark of disgust only barely repressed. He wondered for a fleeting moment if they would go so far as to call the Aurors, or spit on him from the anonymity of their ranks; and then he was past them, and the soft white marble reared from the whispering grass at his feet.

Draco Malfoy read the carved name once, then knelt and laid his hand flat upon the mound of brown earth. It was cool and moist under his palm, and smelled of silence. Footsteps moved around him, the hush of cloth trailing over the grass. He imagined voices, and wondered at the knowledge he would never know now that it had gone to rest with the person buried under this patch of earth.

At last he stood and gazed over the surrounding hills. The procession filed past him, pausing, watching, a faceless group that did not hold the one he sought. He found him, finally, on the first gentle slope. He sat half in the shade of a tree, looking away from the grave, sorrow bleeding into the field around him. Playful gusts of wind teased his black hair, ruffled the daffodil petals. Sunlight glimmered off of glasses.

Draco climbed the hill with steady steps. He dug his hands into his pockets and breathed the air. Smelled freshness, and spring. His quarry did not move as he approached, and at last Draco stopped, mere feet from him, and waited.

Harry Potter gazed straight ahead, eyes fixed on some distant point. "So, you came."

Draco nodded. Tried briefly to see what Harry was looking at, and then settled his gaze on the man himself instead. "Yes."

"Did they say anything to you?"

Draco lifted his shoulders and sighed. "Perhaps."

He lowered himself to the grass beside Harry, arranging his robes about him. Harry swallowed. His face was dry, but the etchings of unshed tears shadowed his features. "I Owled. When they stopped treatment."

"I know." Draco thought of the solitary white bird winging her way over the manor grounds, the distress leaking from such a broken string of words on folded parchment. An inevitable missive, and yet— He looked at the gravestone and found his own words muddled, like fibers in his throat. "I wish… I should have known Remus better."

Harry's eyes flickered. "You knew him better than most."

Draco inhaled. Exhaled. Ran his hand over the soft, springy grass. "It's beautiful here."

Harry's gaze focused suddenly, and his lips tightened. "It's too alive. It doesn't feel like there's a—"

 _Grave_. Draco nodded. Harry wavered, as if the breeze were blowing him about, and Draco placed a hand at his back, pressing until he felt the warmth of Harry's body. His own body reached for it instinctively, sought to fold itself around it, and Draco shut his eyes against the onslaught. Wondered why he had stayed away. How he had stayed away.

Harry blinked, and his face sagged, became older. "He could have…" He stopped. Started again. "Closest thing to a father."

"Harry, I'm sorry."

Harry's lips curved faintly. "I am, too."

Draco rested his palm on Harry's back and stared out over the swaying daffodils. Creamy yellow. The sky was the blue of oceans, broken by white puffs of clouds, like waves scudding across the surface of the sea.

"Why did you come?" Harry asked. "They might have…"

He gestured, an aimless wave of his hand. Draco looked down the hill at upturned eyes, slow-moving people in black. "Let them."

Harry said nothing. Draco found himself leaning forward. Such a slight movement. "I wanted to be here, Harry. Should have… sooner."

Harry's fingers curled into the lush grass, wiry knuckles and blunt fingers. His hands were thinner, creased by two years Draco had not witnessed. By a slow, lingering death and a burial in a quiet field.

"Thank you for coming," Harry said in a quiet voice. His shoulders slumped so gradually that Draco felt more than saw it. Green eyes closed. "It's okay, though. You can… I want you to go, Draco. It's okay."

Draco reached up and brushed his fingers slowly through Harry's hair. "You're lying, Harry," he said thoughtfully.

Harry's shoulders rose and fell again. "So what if I am? It doesn't change a thing."

"No." Draco continued to card his fingers through black sable. "It doesn't."

Harry's gaze tracked down over gentle slope, the waving yellow and rich green, until it reached the smooth white of marble. For the first time, his breathing hitched, and Draco saw him begin to slide apart.

"I wanted something more for him. It's just… just a stone." A glimmer edged the corner of Harry's eye. Draco thought of matching headstones in the shadow of a manor, side by side in the desolation of gray rocks and ivy covered walls, with none but a solitary son laying irises on immaculate graves.

"I wanted something more than this. Than all of them." Harry's head jerked toward the line of people flowing around the gravestone, up and over the hills in piercing black. "All of _them_."

The last word stung the air, a sharp prickle of thorns. Harry's face had not changed, but the contortion of years was there. What had been stolen from him, and not given back. Draco's hand stilled halfway through Harry's hair.

"There will always be a 'something more,' Harry," he said.

Harry turned dying eyes on him. His eyelashes brushed his cheeks and rose again, dewed with tears. The question in his face was plain as day, but it was an old question, long since put to rest. The pain of today had unearthed it again, and it had ripped furrows as it had resurfaced.

"It was never about them, Harry," Draco murmured. Harry glanced away. His fingers jerked a few blades of grass free.

"I know," he said. A faint smile touched his lips. "I suppose it was about me."

 _It was about me,_ Draco thought, staring out over the rolling green and yellow. _What would happen to_ me, _how_ I _would feel. And it never should have been._

He wanted to speak, for the first time. Wanted to play the words over his tongue and taste the futility in them. They balled in his throat heavily.

"What are they doing here?" Harry whispered. "They never knew him. Never wanted to."

Draco stared through Harry's eyes at the people filtering away from the gravestone. They'd decided long ago about the substance, the worth, of the one buried under that mound. Decided. Perhaps made it so with their ire.

They'd made so many things so with their ire.

Delicate yellow petals wavered in the breeze, and the grass sighed and bent. So easy to pluck. Throw away. Draco felt every day that had passed bearing down on his shoulders, as if he were the fragile surface of those petals, the succulent spring of each green blade. The marble headstone rose from the swell of color.

"He wasn't very old," Harry said. Helplessly.

And yet, he was gone. Draco felt for the press of the grass, smelled the sweet scent of the daffodils, and saw what lay unfinished before him. Remus Lupin would not go on, and what he had lived… had it been wasted? In words, in deeds - choices that echoed, short and final.

Somehow, Draco knew Remus had not wasted. Had not cut himself short. And yet, life had been drawn away from him. There had been more. There would always be more.

The black figures wandered below, deep and dark, snatching the life from the fields and hills, and Draco felt the crush of the time he'd spent listening to them. When what they had said and thought had mattered over all else. He had not lived his life, or Harry's, but _their_ lives. All those people's. He'd wounded himself. He'd bled Harry for them. His failure tasted bitter on his tongue, and he gave up the walls all at once, walls that had been crumbling ever since he'd built them two years ago.

Draco leaned forward - fell forward - and slid his hand around the nape of Harry's neck. Pressed trembling lips to Harry's ear.

He began to whisper, not hearing his own words. Knowing for once that he spoke the truth. The reasons of before, bad or good, that now just _were_. Sundered emotions threading together on his tongue. Harry's name, a balm in his ears. Loss. A pain that, for two years, he'd felt he had no right to voice. But it was no longer about him. It had never been. The realization loosened his words into murmurs and breaths, and Harry's fingers found his arm and clutched. Tears dripped long trails and fell from Harry's chin, and Draco felt the heat of them against his own cheek. Wet on his fingertips as he wiped them away.

"Oh gods, Draco, come ba—" Harry's words splintered, quavered on the edge of a grief he had yet to voice. "Are you— Are—"

"Yes, Harry, I'm coming home," Draco whispered.

 _I am so sorry. Words cannot express._

Harry's arm came up, trembling against his side, and Draco gathered the other man to him. Heard a weak sob. Harry's body held a familiarity he'd not forgotten: warmth, and breath, and solace. His own tears slid free at last, for all the weight he'd pressed into that body, the soul, that he loved so much. He turned his head and met Harry's mouth. Harry's arms were a mantle about him. Draco closed his eyes and saw creamy yellow and green dancing there.

...

I wandered lonely as a cloud  
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,  
When all at once I saw a crowd,  
A host, of golden daffodils;  
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,  
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine  
And twinkle on the Milky Way,  
They stretched in never-ending line  
Along the margin of a bay:  
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,  
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they  
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:  
A Poet could not but be gay,  
In such a jocund company:  
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought  
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie  
In vacant or in pensive mood,  
They flash upon that inward eye  
Which is the bliss of solitude;  
And then my heart with pleasure fills,  
And dances with the daffodils.

~~William Wordsworth, 1804  
(Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Daffodils")


End file.
